For companies that have a physical location, such as restaurants and retailers, a Google My Business listing is an extremely beneficial tool when it comes to local SEO (businesses that operate online can also benefit from a Google My Business brand page).

This free listing features the address, contact details, website, and photos of a business as well as allowing customers to leave reviews and view opening hours. By having a Google My Business listing, your company is more likely to appear in search results and Google Maps for local generic terms as well as brand.

As well as making your company information easily available to the public, GMB offers some great insights into how users are interacting with your listing. The GMB dashboard allows you to see how many views your listing has had, and how many people have clicked to call or requested driving information. Google Small Business also announced this week that you can now see a breakdown of whether listing views have come from Google Search or Google Maps.

With the recent major shift in our digital behaviour, namely the fact that we are glued to our phones all day, more searches are now made on mobile rather than desktop. Whereas before people would have clicked through to your website to get a phone number or address, having this information readily available in the SERP means mobile users may not even need to visit your site. Instead, they simply click a button to make a call, or get directions straight from their current location.

So don’t just rely on your normal website traffic statistics, combine them with these valuable Google My Business insights to understand how user SERP behaviour is changing to create a fuller picture of your website’s performance and reach.